Golden Days: Reminiscences of Alumnae, Mississippi State College for Women

Frances Mildred Bethea Dent, Class of 1950

JUNE 22, 2006 INTERVIEWED BY AMBER KING TRANSCRIBED BY LEIGH POURCIAU FRANCES MILDRED BETHEA CAME TO MSCW from Indianola, r Mississippi. She was born on August 8, 1927, in Starkville, Mississippi, to Carl B. Bethea and Julia May Bevill Bethea. A library science major, she sang in the Glee Club for four years. She was also a member of the Spanish Club, the Library Science Club, and the Wesley Foundation Smaller and Larger Councils. After graduation, she began work as a public librarian in Raymond, Mississippi, and she later worked for a fivecounty regional library. In 1951, she married Robert Miller Dent Jr., who became a brigadier general in the Mississippi Army National Guard. Frances Dent subsequently worked part-time in the Mississippi College library before deciding to stay home to raise her two boys. Active in the Memorial United Methodist Church, in the Bolton-Edwards Garden Club, and in the MUW Alumnae Association, she lives in Bolton, Mississippi. 157 Class of 1950 Frances Mildred Bethea Den FD:When I went to the W, I had agreed with a friend that I would buy her navy blue uniforms. Bless her heart, that year they passed the rule that you didn't have to wear the navy. I just let her down—I didn't buy her clothes. But I was saying, "Yay!" the whole time. Shewas a friend in Indianola. That waspretty funny. Sheprobablywore them to teach quite a while, I imagine. AK: How did you decide to come to the W? FD: My daddy said I was going there. I wanted to go to State, but my daddy said no. So that's the way I wound up getting as close as I could, I guess. I just havepositive memories. Of course, everybodyhas a roommate they can't stand, and that sort of thing—just girl stuff—and it blows over. Freshman year,I lived in Callaway, and our social adviserwas a senator's sister.1 She would say,"My brother the congressman says so." This was applied to about every statement that we heard her say. But I reckon I would have been proud of him, too. He was a nice man. I roomed with a girl from South Mississippi for one semester, and then she wanted to room with somebody else, and so I roomed with somebody else. My new roommate was from the Delta, and I was too. I grew up in Indianola. So Beth and I roomed together a year and a half, and then she got married. Then I roomed with another girl from Brookhaven for my junior year, and then I roomed by myself my senior year. My junior roommate was a business education major, and senior year, she had to havea lot of room for all her technical stuff, so I roomed by myself that year. But I had a lot of good friends. I still do. I'm always glad to see them. When you go back, you find out as you get older and older you'll say, "You haven't changed a bit," and you know good and well they have. But it's reallygood that you remember all their characteristics , and it's just a lot of fun to go back. I went back for my twentieth reunion. I could have gone more often just to have done it, but I went for my twentieth anniversary. I didn't go to my twenty-fifth one; my i. Janie Eliza Stennis (1885-1979), an alumna and sister of Mississippi's U.S. senator, John Stennis, served as a social adviser at MSCW from 1943 until 1957. 158 Classof1950 father had died, and I just couldn't go. Then I went a couple of times later, and then for my fiftieth and my fifty-fifth. I enjoyed them all. AK: How did you feel about the W when you first got there? FD: I guess I wasn't as awestruck as I should have been. What really threw me was that I knew about the campus at Mississippi State, and it was so spread out, particularly in those days. They had a lot fewer buildings than are now at State, so they were kind of spread out, and I was used to a great big campus. When I went to the W, here we were fenced in, in that little bitty one-block thing, and I thought, "Good...